The magic kingdom is just down the road but a million miles away in Sean BakersThe Florida Project, a dreamily impressionistic slice of verite set in a Sunshine State of ragged palm trees, cracked asphalt, and shabby motels in glaring shades of melted sherbet.
Six-year-old Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) lives in one of those rundown pay-by-the-week complexes with her mother, Halley (Bria Vinaite), a volatile, heavily tattooed 22-year-old hardly capable of looking after herself.
Moonee makes her own fun anyway; shes a tough, tiny firecracker, corralling other local kids into mischief that ranges fromOur Ganginnocence (wheedling ice cream money from strangers, holding spitting contests on car windshields) to actual felonies (setting fires in abandoned houses).
And because Halley is usually too loaded or distracted to care, let alone supervise, most days the motels long-suffering manager (Willem Dafoe) ends up parenting by default.
Baker, who also co-wrote the screenplay, has built a mini oeuvre around characters on the fringes, from the lonely porn stars and senior citizens of 2012sStarletto the 2015 festival sensationTangerine, shot on an iPhone and starring two unknown trans actresses.Floridaintroduces a new cute factor into his work: These kids, scrappy and funny and smart, are the kind who say the darndest things, and its a credit to either the writing or the casting (or both) that many of their best lines dont even feel scripted.
But its also not hard to see that theres nothing sweet about Moonees prospects; as Halleys emotional and financial situation slides into the red, so does their already tenuous existence.
Dafoes sensitive performance anchors the movies slippery adult world, and Baker builds a cinematic mood beautifully; the strip malls and swampland and buzzing cicadas on screen feel as real and tactile as the theater seat beneath you.
Once he establishes it, though, he doesnt seem to quite know where to take it, and the story begins to feel more like a series of strung-together anecdotes: an intriguing project, incomplete.B
